Larry Lapides of Imperas recently posted a guest blog at the Imagination MIPS processor blog site. it discusses topics related to Operating System bring up and how virtual platform and advanced tools can provide signiificant benefits.

Linux has become the general purpose operating system of choice for embedded systems, and is almost always supported for high end SoCs developed by semiconductor vendors. These SoCs now have multicore processors, and run symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) Linux. Most vendors start with the MIPS Linux distribution, then customize it for the specific SoC (requiring device tree changes), including the necessary drivers for the peripherals on the SoC as well as supporting other customizations and unique features. While the MIPS Linux distribution is a great starting point, that does not make customization and bring up an easy task.

To put it another way: Just because you get to the Linux prompt doesn’t mean everything is working.